8 Tips to Meet a Deadline that Worked for Me
Contributor

The deadline for my book, a biography about an abolitionist and women's right activist named Julia Wilbur, came and went on July 1, 2016.

I turned in the manuscript on June 27. I did not formally sit down to “write the book” until October 1, 2015. (Full disclosure: I researched for several years and write a proposal and three sample chapters in early 2015.)

For many months, however, especially this past winter, I fretted about the deadline constantly. I woke up at odd hours, unable to fall back to sleep as I juggled in my head how I reach anything close to the maximum word count of 90,000.

But sometime this spring, I turned a corner. In March, I realized that yes, I could do it; yes, the manuscript had some weak spots but I could return to them; and most of all, yes, I would make my deadline. Worry about submitting a manuscript thousands or words short gave way to worry about scaling back (with endnotes, etc., it came to about 93,500.)

Publisher’s changes will come, with their own sets of deadlines, but here's what worked for me this past year. At whatever stage you are in a writing project, maybe some of these tips will work for you, too.

1. I signed a contract. Nothing clarifies the mind, I learned, more than a firm date on a legally binding document. I had to finish; thus I would.

Maybe you are at an earlier stage, but still need accountability. Fashion your own contract. Declare your intention to someone whose opinion you respect. Take a course or workshop for which you submit your piece as an assignment—voila, a deadline. Commit to the due date and post it for everyone—or just for you yourself—to see.

 

2. I worked backwards. I figured I needed a month to put the pieces together, so aimed for a full draft by June 1. In September 2015, I set out a schedule of what I wanted to accomplish by month. Big-picture goals, such as my subject’s early years, by the end of 2015, the Civil War years by March 15, and so on served as guideposts.

Consider how you can break your project into smaller parts. (Even a small project has smaller parts.) Look at a calendar and set ambitious, but do-able goals.

 

3. I scaled back my vision. Those big-picture goals got parsed very small. Write a book? Too scary. Focus on an event to describe in Chapter 6? Yeah, I could handle that.

Remembering Annie Lamott’s “bird by bird” analogy, don’t get too far ahead of yourself. Maybe you can’t write a novel right now, or your entire life’s story, or a researched piece of nonfiction. The good news is that you don’t need to know how to do the whole thing right now. Bit by bit, you will learn.

4. I set a fixed time to work, and turned off email. 8:30 to 11:30 am, longer when I researched in an archive and shorter when I had a must-complete“billable” deadline (freelance writing and editing that feeds the biography-writing habit).

I had the luxury of three hours daily for about eight months. You may have 30 minutes, you may have the entire day. Once you have figured out the time you can devote to your piece, guard that time ferociously. Don’t waste it looking at emails asking you to give money, buy real estate, or forward a joke. That time belongs to you and your writing.

5. I ignored negative stuff. If someone talked to me about missing a deadline or not meeting a writing goal, I tuned them out. I participate in a virtual group in which we email weekly goals every Monday night and report progress. When I read too many reasons why people were not fulfilling their goals, I realized I had to back away or get taken in.

A community with whom to commiserate is a godsend. But take care that their excuses for their writing don’t infect you. A similar situation for me is when I hear people make excuses about not exercising. Hmm, I have a little pain in my knee, too. Now that I think of it, I’m awfully busy, too. And it might rain. Don’t succumb!

6. I said no. I squelched my usual guilt when I turned down semi-related volunteer requests, professional events, and the like. Two freelance writing groups with whom I enjoy spending time meet mid-morning. I declined their invitations, I had to. While each demand in itself might not take much time (“it’s only an hour”), I realized, for me, the cumulative effect would be deadly. 

A deadline gives you a chance to figure out what is really important to you, personally and professionally. I am not saying to become a self-absorbed hermit (although I know some writers do that, and produce great work!). But don’t automatically say yes to everything, either.

 

7. I allowed lots of time for reviewers to get good feedback. I realized I could not push the reviewers who read all or part of my manuscript out of the goodness of their hearts. I had to build in lots of time to accommodate their schedules. When they agreed to serve a reviewer (some I knew only by reputation so my request began with a series of emails to explain my project), I gave them a heads-up so they knew when to expect the draft, then asked for comments in 4 to 6 weeks. While I waited, I worked on the next piece. 

Whether you have a formal feedback system, a writing group, or a trusted friend or two, make sure you give them enough time to review your draft and still meet your deadline. If that means a more compressed schedule for you, so be it.

 

8. I stopped. I learned new things about my subject and her era to include in the manuscript up until the end. I still do. I always will. But at a certain point, I had to declare that I had completed the manuscript. As for those other tidbits? They will go into presentations, Facebook posts and tweets, blog content, and the like. They won’t go to waste.

It turned out that the publisher requested a specific format for submittal that took more time than I expected. If I had been doing it on the afternoon of July 1, I would probably have collapsed into a total blither.

And so, as my subject Julia Wilbur (an 1864 photograph of her, that is) watched, both aghast and awed, I pressed “send.” Please follow my progress on my website.

 

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